There’s an object level argument against (kinds of) socialism in that they didn’t work, and there’s a meta level argument against engineering in general, that societies are too complex and organic for large scale artificial changes to have predictable effects.
there’s a meta level argument against engineering in general, that societies are too complex and organic for large scale artificial changes to have predictable effects.
That’s called an Argument From Ignorance. All societies consist mostly, sometimes even exclusively, of large-scale artificial changes. Did you think the cubicle was your ancestral environment?
Good! So was I. The notion that societies evolve “bottom-up”—by any kind of general will rather than by the fiat and imposition of the powerful—is complete and total mythology.
The notion that societies evolve “bottom-up”—by any kind of general will rather than by the fiat and imposition of the powerful—is complete and total mythology.
So tell me, which fiat imposed the collapse of the USSR?
The committees of the Communist Party, from what I know of history. Who were, you know, the powerful in the USSR.
If you’re about to “parry” this sentence into saying, “Haha! Look what happens when you implement leftist ideas!”, doing so will only prove that you’re not even attempting to thoroughly consider what I am saying, but are instead just reaching for the first ideological weapon you can get against the Evil Threat of… whatever it is people of your ideological stripe think is coming to get you.
I find this exchange strange. My take is that Gorbachev attemopted limited reforms, from the top down, which opened a floodgat e of protest, from the bottom up.
There’s an object level argument against (kinds of) socialism in that they didn’t work, and there’s a meta level argument against engineering in general, that societies are too complex and organic for large scale artificial changes to have predictable effects.
That’s called an Argument From Ignorance. All societies consist mostly, sometimes even exclusively, of large-scale artificial changes. Did you think the cubicle was your ancestral environment?
I was using artificial to mean top-down or socially engineered.
Good! So was I. The notion that societies evolve “bottom-up”—by any kind of general will rather than by the fiat and imposition of the powerful—is complete and total mythology.
So tell me, which fiat imposed the collapse of the USSR?
The committees of the Communist Party, from what I know of history. Who were, you know, the powerful in the USSR.
If you’re about to “parry” this sentence into saying, “Haha! Look what happens when you implement leftist ideas!”, doing so will only prove that you’re not even attempting to thoroughly consider what I am saying, but are instead just reaching for the first ideological weapon you can get against the Evil Threat of… whatever it is people of your ideological stripe think is coming to get you.
So, the USSR imploded because the “committees of the Communist Party” willed it to be so..?
I am not sure we live in the same reality.
I find this exchange strange. My take is that Gorbachev attemopted limited reforms, from the top down, which opened a floodgat e of protest, from the bottom up.